


Words are Hard

by FlamingSquid



Category: Monster Girls | Monster Boys
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:55:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22122184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlamingSquid/pseuds/FlamingSquid
Summary: Persephone struggles to find a way to express a certain emotion to her partner
Relationships: OC/OC
Kudos: 3





	Words are Hard

_“Your…your eyes are like emeralds, glittering a beautiful shade of green…”_. Persephone was noting each word down as they sprung from her mind, though she found herself struggling after each sentence, _“I mean, emeralds are green, do I say it again? Or do I compare it to something else that is green? Shade of…grass?_ ”; this was the third line of the poem she was creating for Olivia. _“So…so would it be ‘Your eyes are like emeralds, glittering like a beautiful forest? But, how does a forest glitter?_ ”; she had been at this for at least several hours at this point. 

In truth, she had felt the urge to create this poem after the morning with Olivia; she reflected on how much affection Liv had shown her over the past months of them being together, but realising she never really answered with the same amount towards her. While she noted that she wasn’t the best at expressing herself with most emotions, let alone love, she wanted to make it up to her girlfriend in some way, and poetry seemed like the best idea. _“Ah dammit! It doesn’t make sense! How’s it supposed to sound good to her if it’s just gonna confuse her!”_ she muttered between her slightly-fanged teeth as she crumpled up the paper into a small ball, throwing it against the nearby trash can for it to land next to numerous other pieces of discarded notes. As it turns out, she was finding it equally hard to transmit her feelings into words. 

The time was now 6pm; Olivia was still at work, as she commonly did late-shifts, and Persephone had retreated to their bed, laying face-down out of frustration, both with herself and the bin filled with throw-away ideas. She truly did not know what to do; emotions were hard for her to express, even when she was a young child, but now she was in conflict with her want to open herself up to Olivia. As this mental match stormed in her mind, the phone inside her pocket rang; upon reaching into her jeans and opening the screen, she saw that Marcus had sent her a text. _“Hey Seph, you and Liv free Saturday? Been feeling a movie marathon all month but Reese cancelled on me >.< You two wanna join?”_; while the Oni woman did enjoy watching movies with her friends, her mind was still clouded with thoughts of her inability to express her love to Liv, leading to the rather blunt reply; “Liv is at work, will ask when she gets back”. Without even a minute passing, he had replied; _“Uh okay. You doing good?”_ , she realised how weird her last message must have been to how she normally chats with him, and he could see something was wrong instantly. _“Something happen with freckles? You wanna talk about it?”_ , in truth she wanted to deflect his questioning, but him bringing up Olivia prodded at the restlessness in her mind, and she instead wanted help more than anything at this moment in time. 

_“Just tryna think of a way to show Liv how much I love her but words are hard :P”_ , trying to play it off like it was more of a joking matter than how she was seeing it. In reality, the phrase “words are hard” summed up her entire problem at this point. About 5 minutes went by with no response, as she sat feeling worse for having admitted to others her problems, something she tried to keep to herself. The phone chimed in, _“Seph, babe, you failed English, I’m sure you can do something else for her. I don’t think she wants you to go full Shakespeare for her XD”_ ; that one kinda stung, she had only slightly failed English, it was her second language after all. _“She’s a chef isn’t she? Make her some food!”_ ; the texts were a sort of revelation to her; she didn’t really take in the fact that she was trying to do something for Olivia with something she hated, but cooking was something they both loved to do together, so maybe that was her answer!

 _“Thanks M, gonna make her the best meal ever!!!”_ ; she hastily tapped and sent, near-running out of the bedroom towards the kitchen, leaving her phone behind as another text appeared; _“Great! So…movies Saturday?”._

Taking her laptop from the couch, she opened it up and set about trying to find a meal to cook for Liv, as she was set to finish work in just under 2 hours and would be home for like 8:30pm. With the screen loading, showing her background of a selfie her and Liv had taken when they went on holiday last year (Liv was in a white bikini set, she had instead settled for jeans and a shirt; she said it was for style, but it was mainly to hide her legs – she really doesn’t like showing them in public), she set about combing the internet for recipes she could make. She didn’t have much time, the local store wasn’t exactly stocked with everything she might need, and her cooking skills, while they had improved, were still pretty bad (having burnt spaghetti in the past, as well as undercooking a cherry pie). 

  
_“Steak? No. Pizza? No. Beef stroganoff? No.. Jeez, there is so much meat on here”_ ; bearing in mind, Liv was a vegetarian, so these sites, were of little help in this regard. 

_“Huh, Pasta Prima…Primavera? Pasta, veg, oil and salt, some cheese…seems like a plan!”_ , while she would normally spend hours trying to decide on what to try, she felt pressured for time, and this way she could at least use food that was already in the flat. After about 5 minutes or so, trying her best to quickly grab all the ingredients while also avoiding pulling off the cupboard doors at full-force, she had assembled everything she needed (though the recipe called for several different vegetables, the only ones in the recipe they had in the kitchen were peppers, carrots and broccoli). 

The initial part went off amazingly she thought, though this was because she had managed not to forget to actually put water in the pot this time. It was at this point she realised that she should probably hold off on making the actual recipe, as it would be done hours before Olivia would be back home, deciding to pass the time by heading to the local store for a dessert course (while they may not have much in terms of fresh vegetables, they have a bunch when it comes to ice cream choices, including mint-chocolate chip; Olivia’s favourite). 

The time was near 8pm and Persephone felt excited; she had everything set up, the flat’s curtains were closed with the light coming from the lamp she had moved from their bedroom to the living room, she had swapped out her baggy clothes for a more fashionable look (though for her, this was just jeans and a black band shirt). The pasta was boiling, and the veggies were sautéing, it was all coming together…until she realised she left the ice cream on the couch. Quickly correcting that mistake, she placed the tub into the freezer but only now realising she had set the heat for the pan too high, and the vegetables were more burning than cooking. 

\---2 hours later---

Olivia made her way up the stairs to her shared apartment, her arms tired from her active job, sighing with both fatigue from work, but also relief that she had a day-off tomorrow. Coming to the door of the apartment, she could smell the faint whiff of burning, something she was all too familiar with in her line of work. Opening the door, she made her way to the kitchen, noticing what looked like two plates filled with overcooked pasta that seemed to slough from just the faint breeze, and burnt things she couldn’t even tell what they once were. Moving past the abomination in the kitchen, she found Persephone on the couch, lazily watching TV. _“Hey babe…how was work?”_ ; pitched as both happy and pained at the same time from the Oni’s mouth. Even from where she stood, the red-haired woman could see bandages across the purple-skinned woman’s hands; something she had come to realise over time was a common occurrence when she attempted to coo by herself. 

_“It was okay, the new apprentice guy Eren accidently added salt to a cheesecake so it was pretty f-“_ , Olivia had stopped herself from going further into the story, seeing the slight pained expression the Oni woman was trying to hide with her plastered hand. “Baby? What’s wrong?” the human woman inquired; she did not want to ask about the food in the other room, as cooking was a rather sensitive spot for her when she messed it up. 

Persephone sighed into her hand; _“I just…I just wanted to do something nice for you for a change. You do everything for me, but I never do anything for you, but I can’t write good, I can’t…”_ she trailed off, realising that the she would have seen the failed attempts at making a meal on her way in. Olivia plopped down on the couch next to her girlfriend’s legs. _“I wanted to show you how much you mean to me, but I screw everything up”_ ; by now she was using her hand to hide her eyes as she felt tears welling in her eyes with each word, and Olivia could tell by her tone that she was in a sorrowful state. 

She slowly moved her body from the couch to the floor beside the Oni’s face, keeping her left hand on her waist while her other one rested on the Persephone’s silver hair and slowly began to stroke in gentle movements. _“Hey, hey, it’s okay, even I can’t write that great, you’ve seen me try to write, my hand-writing is horrible”_ , trying to say such in a joyful tone but it kept the tinge of worry throughout. _“And even I’m not that great at cooking all the time!”._

 _“That’s not the problem”_ , she responded, sniffling and doing her best to try and act composed while also averting her gaze behind her bandaged hand. _“I don’t care if I screwed those things up, I just wanted to do something nice for you”_ ; her lips had the slightest tremble that Olivia could barely see. 

Instead of responding, Olivia stood up, slowly retracting both of her hands and manoeuvring her left arm and leg over her girlfriend, positioning herself on top of her in a very awkward spooning position; “You don’t need to say it…I can tell you tried really hard for me”, moving her hand along the Oni’s muscular arm, interlocking her fingers into the hand that covered Persephone’s face. _“You tried to cook for me, write for me, you worry about me all the time, and genuinely care about how I feel”_ ; the tension in the Oni has slightly subsided as Olivia began to rub slight circles with her thumb on the back of her partner’s hand, _“So I feel like I know how much I mean to you”_ , she moved her head upward and settled it onto Persephone’s shoulder, _“…and you know how much you mean to me.”._

The pair laid there on the couch for near half an hour, in silent understanding of each other. They shuffled their bodies to allow for a more comfortable position, with Olivia laying on top off her Oni partner, both of them looking up at the ceiling as their interlocked hands move slowly with pensive movements of comfort to each other. 

Persephone had spent the last few days worried that she was not showing enough affection to her partner, though now, with her girlfriend’s comforting words and actions, she had realised that she did not need to blatantly say it with words, or express it with food, but was doing it every day, even if she herself did not see it. So for the rest of the night, rather than trying to impress her partner, she lay there, content with how the night went despite all her planning…

It was not until 10pm that the couple realised they had not eaten at all since their heartfelt conversation, and that the only food in the flat was now a tub of mint ice cream and two plates of overcooked pasta. Easy to say, but they both decided to splurge on a vegetarian pizza. Marcus was left with no reply and spent the following Saturday watching all of the John Wick movies by himself. 

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I'm gonna try and post bi-weekly!  
> Also me: Replaying Stardew Valley is fun
> 
> But yeah, here's to hoping I can actually keep on top of that bi-weekly promise lol


End file.
